SIDELIGHTS ON THE WAR

New Zealand Tablet, 2 November 1916, Page 17

SIDELIGHTS ON THE WAR

GENERAL. Eighteen of the African missionaries known as the White Fathers have been killed in the war and three have died of exhaustion under the flags of the Allies. Private Robert Hart, known as the Avoca giant, who has been wounded in France, and who is 6ft 9in in height, has been said to be the tallest man fighting on the side of the Allies. But this is not so, for there are at least two men, both from Goulburn side, in the Australian army, who stand 7ft, and there is one whose height is 7ft Sin. The wounded in France seem in a special manner to belong to the clergy and the Sisters. In Paris alone' and its suburbs 955 beds have been placed at the disposal of the wounded in 11 Catholic hospitals, 437 beds in 8 sanatoria, 2189 beds in 20 educational establishments, 954 beds in IS settlements, 1058 beds in 21 religious communities. In all 5633 beds have been set aside for the 'wounded soldiers by Catholic institutions in, the diocese of Paris, and out of 12,700 beds which the three societies of the Red Cross have in Paris and the suburbs, 6200 are cared for by religious. The Italian military chaplains have won golden opinions. They have dispelled the illusion of those in Italy who imagined that a man in clerical dress is only useful in the church or the sacristy. A heroic act on the part of one of the chaplains is just recorded. Learning that it was considered necessary for the recovery of a certain wounded soldier that as many as twelve pieces of human flesh should be grafted mi to his body, the Rev. Father Castellano readily submitted to operations for the purpose. The heroic priest has been the recipient of enthusiastic congratulations from officers, doctors, and others. HONOR FOR CATHOLIC LADY. It was announced in a recent Supplement to the London, Gazette that the King had awarded the Military Medal for bravery in the field to Lady Dorothie Mary Evelyn Feilding (says the I' ni verse). Lady Dorothie is a member of the Monro Motor Ambulance, which is a Red Cross unit attached to (he Belgian Field Army, and also works for the French, and has driven the Monro Motor Ambulance and attended the wounded for over a year with marked devotion to duty and contempt of danger. She is 26 years of age and is the second daughter of the Earl of Denbigh. A year ago Lady Dorothie received the Order of Leopold from the King of the Belgians for services to the Belgian wounded. Lady Dorothie was received at Windsor Castle by the King, who personally decorated her with the Military Medal. FRENCH BISHOPS BUSY. The French episcopate has had a busy week (says a Paris correspondent, under date September 2). While several of the bishops joined in the national pilgrimage to Lourdes, where the principal event was the presentation of the petition for peace of 700,000 children, led by the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes on the silver altar of the Grotto, others have been active in many ways. Preaching at the procession of Notre Dame de Boulogne, which took place on the Sunday Within the Octave of the Assumption, the Bishop of Arras, Mgr. Lobbeday, again protested publicly against the deportations from Northern France, and gave it as his opinion that the population was not safe from a repetition of the occurrence. The Bishop of Verdun, Mgr. Genisty, also presided this week at a significant celebration. This was the re-opening of the restored church of Vassincourt, on the Marne. The last Mass was said in Yassincourt parish church in September, 1914, during a terrific fight,, which raged about it for five ' days, and was but an episode in the great battle of the Marne. The priest-brancardier who celebrated that Mass did so at the risk of his life, for the enemy’s bombardment left little of the sacred edifice standing. The restora-

tion during the continuance of the war is yet another proof of France’s confidence in final victory. In his powerful address the Bishop of Verdun said that, after the long death of two years, they were now at the dawn of the resurrection. Cardinal de Cabrieres, Bishop of Montpelier, and dean of the French episcopate, has just entered on his 87th year and has been visiting his native place, Beaucaire. It was to this deeply royalist town that the Marquis de Cabrieres, mother of the future Cardinal, retired in the revolution of July and there he was born. Another Cardinal, the much-tried Archbishop of Reims, Cardinal Lucon, has given an interesting interview to a correspondent of the Matin , in the course of which he declared that his place would continue to be in Reims, no matter what the danger. Finally, magnificent scenes of public enthusiasm and piety marked the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Bourges, Mgr. Izart, who was received by the civil authorities and escorted to the Cathedi al by the populace, the women and young girls offering him flowers. IRISHMEN IN SCOTTISH REGIMENTS.' , In the course of some recent remarks at a meeting of the Unionist and Liberal War Committee, Lord Derby said that the Irish regiments were being filled up by Englishmen and Scotchmen, and that as a result ot the operation of the Military Service Act the Highland regiments obtained an adequate supply of Highlanders He added that, as far as possible, Scotchmen would be drafted into Scottish regiments. It is a pity that the policy of drafting Irishmen into Irish regiments has not also been pursued as far as possible. Irom the first complaints have been made of the difficulties placed at recruiting offices in the way of Irishmen who desired to join Irish regiments. That there was ground for these complaints is proved very plainly by a correspondent of the Irish Weekly. From the Mai Office lists of casualties for four consecutive days he took the names of Irishmen who had been resident in Scotland. It was easy to distinguish them, as they are all O’Briens, McDermotts, O’Connells, and the like. As given in the Irish. Weekly they number about 400, and only some 20 of them are the names of men who belong or belonged to Irish regiments. Three hundred and eighty were enrolled in Scottish regiments. It is evident that the vast majority of the 30,000 Irishmen who joined the Army in Scotland were put into Scottish regiments. The correspondent of the Irish Weekly asserts that in cases within his own knowledge this was done against the wishes of the recruits. The military authorities should have resisted instead of encouraged such a policy. GORIZIA. Gorizia, Gorz, or Gorici, has never formed part of •Italia,’ whether ‘lrredenta’ or otherwise, since the days of Imperial Rome. Except for a brief interval during the Napoleonic period, it has always belonged to some Germanic power, and until a few weeks ago was capital of a ‘ county ’ which had the Emperor Francis Joseph himself for the count. Oddly enough, the dominant language is neither German nor Italian’ but Slavonic. This town of three languages has an interesting connection with our French Allies. Here in 1836 died the exiled Bourbon Charles X., the last King of France, who was crowned at Reims amid the magnificent music of Cherubini’s ‘Coronation Mass.’ Trieste, on which the hopes of all Italians are fixed with a _ daily-growing assurance of fulfilment, has special claims to be regarded as part of Italian Irredenta, for even while Rome was yet a republic Tergeste, as this northern Adriatic port was then called, and all Istria which lies immediately below it passed into Roman possession. Modernised as the city has become under Austrian domination, and enlarged as it is in these days, its ancient name is yet preserved here and there, notably in the Tergesteo, as the Exchange buildings are called. It was in Trieste, when he was British Consul there, that Charles Lever wrote many of his

novels. The Daily Chronicle says that in taking Gorizia the modern Italians have succeeded where the ancient forerunners of the Austrians—the barbarians— centuries failed. What we know, for the moment ironically, as the Nice of Austria, represented to the Romans a formidable barrier against their savage enemies. Around Gorizia in the Middle Ages the great battles for the mastery of Venetia raged. The Austrians, it must be noted in estimating the achievements of our - Ally, at the very beginning of the war added to the natural strength of their camp among the hills by letting loose the waters of the Isonzo from canal and river, so as to form a widespread morass to defend the city, although twelve months ago we were all expecting the imminent fall of Gorizia, and suffered disappointment, it is good to remember that our Italian friends never for a moment doubted. ORIGIN OF THE RED CROSS. In these days of war we hear and see so much of the useful deeds wrought by the wearers of the Red Cross that it is interesting to learn from a writer in La Croix that the founder of the Knight Templars, the first wearer of the Red Cross, was Hugh de Pagan, who was born on June 2, 1070, in the feudal Castle of Mahun, which was situated amidst the mountains of Haut Viverais, close to Annonay, France. He was the son of William de Pagan, Baron de Mahun, Lord of Argental and of other places, and of Marie de Montchal. The French chronicler, Odou de Gissey, wrote in 1862 that at ‘ the time that Baldwin reigned as third King of Jerusalem, in the year 1118, two French gentlemen and soldiers, who were called Templars, having no fixed residence or domicile at the commencement of their foundation, were permitted by the King of Jerusalem to dwell in his palace, close to the Temple. One of the gentlemen was Hugh de Pagan. The ancient Castle of Mahun is thus united to the Temnle in Jerusalem by the chivalrous and brilliant apparition of the two knights clad in armor, wearing white mantles, which were decorated with the Red Cross.’ The Marquis de la Tourette, who lived in the eighteenth century, has left a very interesting memoir on Hugh de Pagan, in which he states that the latter was born in the ancient Castle of Mahun. A contemporary archaeologist, Canon Fraisse, Cure of Monistrol-sur-Loire, who died about fifty years ago, also published a learned treatise on Hugh de Pagan and the Order of Templars affirming the same statement, and dwelling on the fact that the first foundations of Knight Templars were all made in localities close to the birthplace of Hugh de Pagan. A Jesuit who was a moralist, historian, and learned archaeologist. Father F. de Curley (1837-1909), likewise refers in his work, entitled Le Tomheaih de Saint Eer/is at Lnuvesce (1886), to the birthplace of Hugh de Pagan as being at Mahun. Louvesce is not far from Mahun. The ancient Castle of Mahun has been a ruin for centuries; there only remains to-day a piece of the old wall on a high rock in a few years no traces of it will probably remain. About twenty-five years ago a large wooden cross was erected close to the ruins to perpetuate the memory of the founder of the Order of Templars, Hugh de Pagan, born 800 years ago. HOW WARS FINISH; ABRUPT AND SURPRISING ENDINGS. haps no war of modern or any times (says an exchange) has been the subject of such a state of prophecy regarding its duration as the present one. Most of the predictions have already been proved wrong, and the struggle still proceeds apparently as virile as ever. But this confusing of the prophets is no new thing. There has hardly ever been- a great war which did not at some time, long prior to the actual finish, exhibit signs of collapse. The sharpest of all nineteenth century conflicts, the Franco-German war of 1870, was only six weeks old when the staggering tragedy of Sedan happened,, removing in one blow from the scene of activities the

two finest Marshals in France, her Emperor, and the entire Army of the North. Many experts committed themselves at the time to the view that this disaster must prove quickly fatal. It did not, as we know j but when the great French Army of the Rhine fell into German hands eight weeks later it seemed the certain herald of an impending end to hostilities. Yet the war dragged on more or less fiercely for three months longer. Its demise was due to no lack of fighting will and courage, but to a sheer attrition of French fighting men. The same might be said of the terrible four years’ struggle between the Confederate aiU Federal States of America, only there the vanquished side had defeat forced down its throat by a fatal paralysis produced by a complete Federal ’predomination on the sea. Many notable wars, however, have collapsed dramatically in the heyday of their youth. ' The SerboBulgarian struggle of 1885 had just reached an exceedingly interesting stage, though the Bulgars looked certain winners, when it was abruptly snuffed out by what seemed uncommonly like diplomatic interference. The Russo-Turkish Surprise. A war which saw armchair experts badly at sea was that between the Russians and Turks forty years ago. The first shot was fired in the spring of 1877, and right away the Russians won victory after victory and if ever an opponent seemed absolutely squashed it was the Turks just them. But neither the military experts nor the Russians had reckoned with the magnificent defence fated to be set up at Rlevna. For nine months the latter tried every means in their power to lower its flag, and only succeeded after sustaining 80,000 casualties, and even then Osman Pasha nearly cheated them of the main prize by making a promising attempt to cut his way out. When war broke out between Japan and China iii the year 1894 most people anticipated a long, dingdong struggle, but one sledge-hammer blow from the former removed all semblance of a contest, and the war fizzled out gloriously. Then, ten years later, when the victorious side faced the Russians, the general feeling in this country seemed to be that Russia would either quickly confound her pigmy rival, or the war would be very protracted. It proved to be one which amply fulfilled all the horrors expected of it, but the end came soon, and it came abruptly. The unrest of Russian people at home, allied to the growing desperate position of the main Russian army, which only the ciaft of a Kuropatkin kept from being surrounded, proved nresistible factors towards accepting peace and swallowing defeat. The Japs were reasonable, even generous, victors, and exacted no indemnity. Short and Sharp. What promised to be a mighty duel and one that might easily endure for a year or two was that between Austria and Prussia, in 1866. Armies totalling a million strong, and faultlessly equipped, as German armies usually are, took the field. But within six weeks from the declaration of war 450,000 fighting men met face to face one day and decided not merely a battle but the whole campaign— of the fiercest fights of the century, resulting in an overwhelming Prussian victory. Another European war which belied its promise was when Serbia, aided by Russia, threw down the gauntlet to Turkey in 1876, and a great surprise was in store for the prophets. The struggle opened on the first day of July, and on the last day of the following October the Turks, heavily reinforced, stormed the Serbian camp, and the campaign came to a graphic end. The ability of a country to sustain war for an indefinite period was given .signal exemplification by France at the beginning of last century. From 1802 to 1815 her armies, practically unaided, wrestled almost incessantly with as many as six foes at a time. Yet their last essay in this amazing vista of sanguinary fighting seemed more than once likely to end in victory.